merlyn in •Re^2: Dynamically constructed function calls states: Do not resort to eval-string if other means are available. You're firing up the compiler (slower than almost any other solution), and exposing yourself to hard to debug and hard to secure practices.

TheDamian in Perl Best Practices in Chapter 8 has a guideline titled: Avoid string eval. Damian argues that string eval can be slow; produces run time warnings rather than more desirable compile time warnings; and code that generates other code tends to be harder to maintain. He further advises you to use anonymous subroutines and the CPAN Sub::Installer module when you have a need to create new subroutines that are built around some expression that the user supplies.